SEO for Estate Agents – make your site immune to algorithm changes

With Google’s recent Algorithm change, there are a lot of Estate Agents panicking about how it will affect their websites.

I thought it would be good to clear up on how to avoid being penalised when Google’s algorithm changes for the UK.

99% of the time, Google’s algorithm changes are only likely to affect people trying to abuse the system. Using black hat tactics to gain good ranking (in other words cheating the algorithm) is what Google are focused on flushing out. As well as the websites that are poorly designed and optimised in a way that seems spammy to the search engines.

To protect your website from algorithm changes there are some search engine optimisation techniques you can apply to avoid drastically losing ranking:

• 1. Build a website that is valuable to it’s visitors
  
  Is your website navigable? Is the content informative and unique? Does it have a clear call to action? Is the land page clear and clean?
  If the answer is yes then you’ve passed the first step. If not you have to start putting yourself in the users shoes and focus on how other people will see your website.
• 2. Make sure your website is readable to Search Engines
  
  A lot of things users can’t see are important to search engines. There are also a lot of things you can see but search engines can’t (e.g. flash). Make sure Search Engines can actually see your website.
  
  Things you need to review:
  
  • Title tags,
  • Description tags
  • General content
  • Alt tags
  • Internal links.
  
  You need to make sure all these are unique, informative and detailed.
• 3. Clear call to action
  
  For an Estate agency website the call to action is normally just the property search tool. This is where you want your user to click so make it prominent, clear and easy to use. You don’t want to confuse the user with a crowded web page and difficult tools. Contact information should also be easy to find once these actions have been taken.
• 4. Regularly update your blog and news feeds
  
  For blogs to be successful they need to be fresh. Users and search engines won’t visit your website frequently if you only update it once a month.
  To attract visitors the content needs to be interesting and useful and try to avoid sales pitches and promotions.
  
• 5. Build links the right way from the start
  
  To gain valuable links, write meaningful articles that appeal to the readers. If the articles are good people will want to link to you.

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant